Page 58 of Left on Read

“Your presentation and paper were very good. But your written work during the semester was merely adequate … if that. I wonder: Did you steal some of your ideas from other students during these ‘study sessions’?”

I’m so painfully confused.

I thought she was distracted. Or just kind of inept. I thought she was burned out and exhausted and she had nothing left to give. But she’s being spiteful and vindictive andselfish.Can burnout look like that? Is she just a bad person? It’s beyond baffling, the idea of a teacher actively trying to prevent her students from studying the material together. It’s so perplexing that my confusion must have shown on my face.

Lowry smiles. It’s full of malice. She might be the single worst person I’ve ever met. The daggers in her eyes point right at me, and I know she’s not done flaying me with her words.

“You don’t belong here, Nova. The university world is not for you. In your introductory essay, you wrote that you wanted to be an English professor. An English professor! You’re fragile. You’re shy. You’re … shall we say,socially inadequate? You’re duplicitous, too, and mean-spirited, turning the class against their instructor and mining them for ideas. It’s absolutely shameful. What do your parents do, anyway? They’re not educated, are they? When I was in graduate school …”

She starts to ramble, and her voice becomes a dull roar in myear. I just know that I’m going to be hearing those words forever.You don’t belong here, Nova.And I know I’ll never forget the way she’s looking at me now, either, like I’m nothing but dirt under her shoes. Like I’m nothing but pieces of what used to be a person.

You don’t belong here, Nova.

She’s still talking, but as I hear those words echo one more time, I wonder why I’m still sitting here. I don’t feel equipped to metaphorically stand up for myself, but I can physically stand up and leave. Though my legs wobble underneath me, I leave the creaking chair behind and step toward the light of the hallway. Lowry speaks again, and I freeze. Even in fight-or-flight mode, I can’t make my body do the thing that’ll save me.

“You think you’re so smart.” Her voice is a scathing whisper. “But you’re not. You just weren’t born for this.”

Finally, I put one foot in front of the other. I make it out of there, and my perfect-crying-hideout bathroom is just around the corner. It has that designation for a reason, because it’s discrete and quiet and if anyone ever finds me there, they’ll leave me alone. I don’t walk, I run. I sprint out of the building as fast as my body will allow. I can’t breathe and I can’t see anyone I pass in the hallway because I’m running so fast that they blur. Maybe that’s just the tears starting to fall. I don’t know, and I don’t care. I fly past the crying bathroom. My feet won’t stop, not yet.

You don’t belong here, Nova.

I make it out into the fresh air. Without making a conscious decision, I head back to the Endeavour wing. To my spot. Almostfour years, and I’ve never cried there. It’s sacred to me. That overly sunlit bench is my North Star, and I’m running toward it like a targeted missile.

You don’t belong here, Nova.

No one else is there, because it’s late in the afternoon and everyone should be headed home.You think you’re so smart.Although some part of me wants to just let myself fall to the ground, a more prominent part of me needs to feel the mystical powers of my favorite spot.You’ll never belong in my world.I lie down across the bench, and I let myself sob and weep and pathetically sniffle.You just weren’t born for this.

You don’t belong here, Nova. You’ll never belong.

“Oh, Novella,” I hear him say before I see him. Hayes. I thought he’d gone home. Instead, here he is, being the witness to my devastation. The one witness I didn’t want.

He sits down on what’s left of the bench. He shifts me around until my head’s resting in his lap. He’s warm, and he smells like Hayes, and his fingertips running over the back of my neck are enough to make me feel something other than the heavy anguish that’s crushing my chest.

You don’t belong here, Nova.

“Why did I do that?” I ask him. I hope he doesn’t want an explanation for my current emotional state. I don’t think I have one. I’m still not sure what just happened, beyond my worst fear coming to life.

“Do what?” He runs gentle fingers through my hair. My tears are falling onto the knees of his jeans.

“Help everyone. Why can’t I just leave shit alone?” I wipe snot off my face with the back of my hand, not even caring how gross that is.

“Because that’s who you are, Novella. You help everyone. You can’t leave shit alone.”

You’ll never belong in my world. You weren’t born for this.

He’s right. It’s in my nature to fuck up like this.

OfficialEndeavourHigh:Seniors: is anyone else just straight up not having a good time rn

The midday light shines through my gauzy curtains, and I roll over so I’m facing the wall. I pull the hood of Hayes’s sweatshirt over my head to block out the rest of the light. It smells like him, and that helps.

I took a mental health day. It’s the first time I actually put my own mental well-being over my possibly obsessive desire to be perfect at school.

My mom was terribly proud. She’s been drilling this into my head for years, that I’m more important than my grades, that I need to take care of myself, blah, blah, blah. I don’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t her affirming words and years of emotional support that made today happen. I couldn’t tell her it was someone else’s vitriol.

I haven’t told her what Lowry said. I haven’t told anyone. It was bad enough breaking down in front of Hayes yesterday. I thought about telling Esha or Piper or, hell, even one of my brothers. But every time that mental video started to play, they eachreacted with intense anger. It’s anger on my behalf. Maybe even warranted. Probably warranted, I can admit, but I can’t handle it. I can’t imagine handling someone else’s anger on top of all of my own feelings.

But this day isn’t about wallowing in feelings, my own or anyone else’s. It was a practical decision. To spare me from going back into that building. I just couldn’t do it. Not yet. That place was home, and now every time I look at that sunlit bench near the windows, I’ll think of my own heartbreak. I’ll go back tomorrow, but I couldn’t do it today.